The art of imagining a greener future

Promoting sustainability is more than just facts and figures for
one educator, writes Peter Vincent.

Dr Paul Brown "There is enormous hope in the aspirations of
the students".Photo: Marco del Grande

Environmentalists have long been frustrated that the public does
not listen to - or at least takes a long time to hear - their
messages about the future of the planet.

Dr Paul Brown, whose passion for nature was formed playing and
bushwalking in Oatley Park as a child, has never restricted himself
to one approach.

For most of the past 20 years he has used as many skills and
mediums as he can to inform people about environmental problems and
solutions.

He has been a researcher and scriptwriter on several
documentaries, including Sixty Thousand Barrels, the 2002
feature about attempts to clean up toxic waste at Botany Bay. He
also researched and edited interviews with Maralinga veterans that
formed the basis of a play (which was performed in Australia and
Britain) and is due to be made into a documentary in 2009.

He is in the early stages of planning interviews with
"environmental refugees" - people displaced by climate change - a
project likely to lead to similar creative works. Dr Brown also
co-wrote, with Deborah Mills, Art and Wellbeing, a book that
presented examples of the connections between the creative arts and
happier, more sustainable communities.

He was director of Greenpeace campaigns in 1992 and 1993,
chaired the community committee examining Orica's clean-up of
hexachlorobenzene waste at Botany Bay, and has held committee
positions at the Australia Council and the NSW Ministry for the
Arts.

"Public participation has to be sought in a number of ways, not
just through distributing information," he says.

Given that so much of his time has been spent educating, it is
fitting that Dr Brown turned to teaching at the University of NSW
in the mid-90s, at first lecturing in environmental studies. "There
is enormous hope in the aspirations of the students, which really
makes me want to get up in the morning."

This year Dr Brown was appointed head of the university's school
of history and philosophy and is one of several people seeking to
encourage a sustainability ethos at the university. He is in the
process of expanding and updating courses in environmental history
or philosophy, and believes it is essential that history students
understand how humans' relationships with the natural environment
affected everything from scientific discoveries to urban
development and farming techniques. "It's the old adage: by
studying how change happened, it frees us to imagine different
futures."

"Imagining different futures" is a common thread in Brown's
career, and nowhere is it more relevant than in his creative
pursuits. He believes plays, movies and books have an important
role in ensuring the public develops the value of
sustainability.

"The creative arts are excellent vehicles for raising awareness,
but also exploring solutions and developing knowledge needed to
make change." In other words, art helps us to not just imagine and
articulate a more sustainable society, it allows us to put it on
show for public scrutiny."

Brown says "culture vultures" are not the only audience for art
about the environment.

It also influences corporate, political and bureaucratic
processes by motivating the public to call for change, by
documenting an issue and also by creating dialogue between
government agencies and communities. This was part of his focus in
Murray River Story, a play he co-wrote in 1988 that combined
spiritual and scientific suggestions to contribute, albeit
unsuccessfully, to a long history of opposition to the way the
Murray has been used. More recently, material from the Maralinga
veterans' project has been used to lobby for compensation.

Although Dr Brown shares the current sense of optimism about
environmental change, he believes that activism is as relevant as
ever.

"We have reached an implementation, stage and in some ways
that's even more dangerous, because there are clear benefits in
claiming to be green. We need legal professionals, consumer
watchdog groups, standards organisations and the public to call
government and industry to account as they attempt to make
change.

"It's time to weed out those elements of government and industry
policy and practice that are not consistent with ecological
sustainability, such as procurement. If you are buying paper, what
paper is it and where does it come from? If you are a manufacturer
using chemicals you need a policy that leads you to avoid toxic
chemicals.

"The saying 'Everyone is an environmentalist now' has some truth
to it. The last 18 months has raised everyone's awareness, but with
that has come a massive increase in what used to be called
greenwashing; there is a big difference between awareness and
action."

Paul Brown

- AGE 55

-POSITION Head of School of History and
Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of NSW;
and senior lecturer in environmental policy.

-QUALIFICATIONS AND CAREER PATH Bachelor
of Applied Science in Geology and PhD in Geology and Geochemistry,
Masters in Science and Society. Started in academia, moved into
community development and then arts. A scriptwriter since 1985,
with two years as a manager for the Australia Council's Community
Cultural Development Board followed by two more as the campaign
manager of Greenpeace Australia before joining the University of
NSW as lecturer in environmental policy.

-GREEN VISION Human values need to change,
to bring ecological consciousness to bear on human choice. As
ecological citizens we have critical choices to make about
technology, our relationship to place, and the life of future
generations.

1192300769148-smh.com.auhttp://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/the-art-of-imagining-a-greener-future/2007/10/16/1192300769148.htmlsmh.com.auSydney Morning Herald2007-10-17The art of imagining a greener futurePromoting sustainability is more than just facts and figures for
one educator, writes Peter Vincent.SpecialsEnvironmenthttp://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/10/16/paulbrown_narrowweb__300x407,0.jpg

Dr Paul Brown &#133; "There is enormous hope in the aspirations of
the students".